Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
Alfred North Whitehead was a British mathematician, logician, and philosopher of the late 19th and 20th centuries. With his student Bertrand Russell he co-authored the monumental Principia Mathematica, a foundational work in modern mathematical logic published in three volumes between 1910 and 1913. The quotes below are attributed to Alfred North Whitehead, organized by topic.
Browse Alfred North Whitehead by topic
Alfred North Whitehead on Freedom
-
“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.”
ch. 5.
Alfred North Whitehead on God
-
“Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.”
Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma" . -
“Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma" .”
In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty. -
“Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".”
There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
Alfred North Whitehead on Knowledge
-
“The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
Pt. II, ch. 1, sec. 1. -
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
ch. 5. -
“Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.”
p. 100; Ch. 12, April 28, 1938. -
“The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.”
ch. 1. -
“It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.”
ch. 15. -
“Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.”
Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture IV: "Truth and Criticism" .
Alfred North Whitehead on Life
-
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
p. 285. -
“Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ... identification of rhythm as the causal counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close ... The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.”
p. 197 -
“There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.”
Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Alfred North Whitehead on Mind
-
“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”
Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 6
Alfred North Whitehead on Nature
-
“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, " Seek simplicity and distrust it.”
The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143 . -
“Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order and of simultaneity. Primarily (according to his analysis) time-order only refers to the succession of events at a given place. Accordingly each given place has its own time-order. But these time-orders are not independent in the system of nature, and their correlation is known to us by means of physical measurement. Now ultimately all physical measurement depends upon coincidence in time and place.”
p. 51
Alfred North Whitehead on Politics
-
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.”
Process and Reality, 1929
Alfred North Whitehead on Truth
-
“Seek simplicity, and distrust it.”
The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143 .
Things actually not said by Alfred North Whitehead
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Alfred North Whitehead but are in fact from someone else. Did Alfred North Whitehead say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
-
Did Alfred North Whitehead say this? No.
“The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate any need for intelligent thought.”
Attributed to Whitehead in A = B (1996) , by Marko Petkovšek, Herbert S. Wilf, and Doron Zeilberger, p. 3, but this most likely had its origins in a margin note submitted by an anonymous student, quoted in the book Concrete Mathematics : A Foundation for Computer Science (1992) by Ronald L. Graham, Donald E. Knuth, and Oren Patashnik, p. 56. That book, with which Wilf was quite familiar, on page 503 quotes Whitehead making a very similar statement. Indeed, that quotation (from chapter 5 of Whitehead's An Introduction to Mathematics ) is already correctly attributed above. (Disputed.)
-
Did Alfred North Whitehead say this? No.
“The purpose of thinking is so our thoughts die instead of us.”
Not found in any of his writings. Possibly a paraphrase of Karl Popper in Epistemology Without A Knowing Subject (1967): "Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs." (Disputed.)